Symmetry Quilt

Yesterday and today went REALLY well. I feel so much better about everything after two successful days. Mrs. C was out and Miss K (the sub) and I ran things. She let me teach the whole day both days and I feel like I learned SO much from being in charge for two days. I definitely made mistakes, but I now know what it means to learn to teach by teaching.

In math, the past two days have been focused on symmetry. Yesterday we found the lines of symmetry of various polygons and talked about connections between shapes and their lines of symmetry. Today we talked about translations (slides), reflections (flips), and rotations (turns). I am kind of anti-worksheet, so for their final project they each had to make a symmetrical quilt square, and they came up with some AMAZING designs -- (see above picture). They drew the lines of symmetry that they wanted to use and then flipped their designs over those lines. I was so proud! They got really into it and some of their designs were incredibly detailed.

N came in really upset this morning and it turns out that he was diagnosed with diabetes yesterday afternoon. :( He told me that his grandpa died of diabetes and that he was really scared. He and I talked a little and then I walked away to another table so he could collect himself and I hear Mik and Eth who were sitting at the table with N say:

Mik (completely serious): "Its ok N. If you die, I will come to your funeral."
Eth: "Yeah, I will come too. We will make sure its real nice. I had a real nice funeral for my hermit crab when he died."

Of course, I turned around...
Miss G: "Hold up here, no one is dying. Diabetes is not a fatal disease - doctors do great things with medicine, N will be just fine..." etc. etc...

Good grief. :)